


The Apartment at the End of the Road

by CiderApples



Category: Supernatural
Genre: AU, Depression, End of the Road, M/M, old fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-24
Updated: 2018-08-24
Packaged: 2019-07-01 23:12:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15784074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CiderApples/pseuds/CiderApples
Summary: Everything has an end, and hunting is no different.





	The Apartment at the End of the Road

**Author's Note:**

> At some point in the distant past, this fic was possibly relevant to canon. Not anymore, but I have a weird sort of affection for it, so here it is. :)

Everything has an end, and hunting is no different.

For the the longest time, Dean thought it was, but then the end comes.

They pass the baton to Jody Mill's new generation of hungry hungry hunters, pile into Baby and drive away, almost instantly falling into an obsessive pattern of checking their phones for distress signals.

"Damn," Dean says, realization dawning in a tight-knitted way across his face. "We're Bobby." 

He gets to an intersection and his foot stalls on the pedal. Not one of them in the car - not Dean with his hand on the stick, nor Sam tucking his windy hair into place in the passenger seat, nor Cas hunched forward from the back with his elbows ledged on the seat corners -  has has any idea what to do next.

 

* * *

  
Sam is the first to get his head on straight.

He cherry-picks a city _(we can start fresh anywhere, Dean,_ he says) and finds an apartment ( _we'll stay together just a little longer, all right? Until we can save up_ ) and lands a job without much trouble. He's a smart kid; always has been.

The apartment he scouts is bigger than a hotel room, which is a step up as Dean sees it. They still all have to share a bathroom, which sucks on Taco Tuesdays just as much as it always has, but there’s two bedrooms and that’s one more than they're used to (though, considering they're fostering a fallen angel, still one less than they ought to have). 

Somebody has to share, so Dean ends up bunking with Cas; not for the reasons he puts forth _(he’s my damned angel, guess I’m stuck with him)_ but because he’s not as good as Sam at being alone. After all these years, he’s not sure he could sleep with a roomful of quiet pressing down on him: a sea of empty nothing, all to himself.

 

* * *

  
Sam sleeps alone just fine. In fact, he does a lot of things just fine – like moving on with his life, for one.

He’s been working a real-person job for just over a month when he starts skipping out on family dinner. And yeah, Dean’s aware that sloppy takeout's not worth much, but it’s _family dinner_ , so it rubs him the wrong way a little. Without Sam, Dean has to sit across from his human angel _(It’s weird if you don’t eat, Cas. At least stop staring; it’s not feeding time at the zoo, dammit)_ and feel those blue eyes on him and have no idea what to say, besides, _throw me a duck sauce_.

At some point, Sam brings a girl over — but just once. The way they look at each other, Dean knows Sam won’t be renewing the lease on their little two-bedroom.

 

* * *

  
Sam buys a house, eventually. Not outright, but he puts down a nice chunk with That Girl _(come on, Dean, she has a name)_ and Dean finds an apartment across town because he doesn’t want to escape Sam’s orbit. He’s afraid that if he does, he’ll never get back in.

Besides, he’s followed his kid brother’s example and gotten himself a job. Liquor distribution, apparently, pays for two nice bedrooms and a bath: two bedrooms, not one, because Cas comes with him. He's taking fucking forever to adjust. He still doesn’t have a job. He can barely buy groceries. And Dean's pretty sure, at this point, that he’s _never_ going to get the hang of idioms.

But Dean doesn’t mind. What does he need a whole place to himself for?

 

* * *

  
Sam marries That Girl, whose name is Rhonda.

Dean goes to the wedding and smiles a lot more than he’s used to, until his face hurts and he sucks the open bar dry to make it stop.

Seated next to Dean at table 6, Cas faces the wedding party with his usual perplexity. He’s propositioned by more women than Dean can count: his big, sad eyes just reel 'em in. Sad eyes at a wedding is like some kind of magic sex potion. Dean knows this, because the longer the night goes on, the sadder Dean gets, and the more drunk girls ‘accidentally’ fall into his lap. He sends them on their way with a smile that isn’t one, really, and tries not to feel as alone as he does. He doesn’t bring girls home anymore. Hasn’t for a while.

 

* * *

  
Sam turns off his phone when he leaves on his honeymoon, which throws Dean for a gut-wrenching loop. The only other times they've been no-contact, Sam's been dead, dying, or at college.

The only way Dean can stomach it is to ignore it. Cas offers sympathy _(I know what it feels like to be cut off from one’s family, Dean)_ but it’s not the same _(I’m not cut off, here, Cas — the guy’s on his honeymoon)_. But the truth is, Dean’s never felt so alone. Thank god for the benefits of his 9-to-5, because when Dean goes home to his empty-ass apartment at night, there’s a crate of perks (rum perks, whiskey perks, vodka perks) waiting in the hall closet.

Dean downs a fifth of tequila by the time Sam's plane lands in Tahiti.

When he wakes up from a string of paranoiac drunken nightmares, it's still dark. He tries to turn over onto his back like that might help the spins, but runs aground on something butted up between his shoulder blades.

He almost reaches for his gun before he realizes it’s Cas.

“Cas,” he says, bumping an elbow back against a side of ribs and triggering a soft snort of awakening.

“Dean," Cas says. Then a pause. "You’re wondering why I’m in your bed,” comes the growl, eventually.

“You could say that.”

“You were ill,” Cas says. Unreadable, as usual. “The internet said I shouldn’t leave you alone. Or on your back.”

Dean closes his eyes. Nothing around him shows any trace of vomit. Big plus. “Well, thanks, Cas, but I’m fine, so you can pack up your little nurse hat and-”

“The internet said I shouldn’t listen when you say you’re ‘fine.’”

“The internet is wrong. A lot. Get used to it.” Dean rolls off the bed and stands beside it, crotchety on his knees like an old man. “I'm seriously okay now. Look,” he says, touching his fingertips to his nose, alternating. 

“Why are you doing that?”

Dean sighs. “Never mind. Look, I appreciate the thought, but with all due respect, Cas — get out of my room.”

Cas politely declines. He rolls back in Dean’s bed (fully clothed, to Dean’s great relief) and says nothing.

 

* * *

  
Despite what Dean tries to do in Sam’s brief absence — which is to live his life, enjoy himself, go out for a beer and a burger after work and come home feeling good — he accomplishes little (aside from a blackout drunk every night) and doesn't know why Sam's stupid honeymoon is rocking his boat so damn bad.

Every morning after, he finds Cas playing guardian angel in his bed, and past the fourth day, Dean stops bitching about it, as long as Cas leaves quickly and quietly and doesn’t ask him to talk about whatever it is that’s wrong.

 

* * *

  
At 4 a.m. on the sixth day of Sam's honeymoon, Dean wakes up still plastered.

He jolts in Cas’ arms because it feels weird and wrong for his bed to be holding him down, and reality crushes him like a building coming down: there’re a million empty bottles on his floor and nothing of value anywhere else in his dirty little apartment and his brother is on a beach somewhere starting an actual life, and that’s what Dean’s always wanted for him but never actually considered it would mean he’d have to get his own.

And maybe he doesn’t really want one.

Maybe the best life for him was the one he had, that he’ll never get back.

He feels himself tearing up and wants to punch himself in the face so he won’t.

“Dean?” Cas says.

“Don’t,” Dean orders, but his throat rebels. The velociraptor fence that keeps his feelings in has held up for six days, but something tells him he's not going to make it another five minutes without doing something terrible, and whether that involves tears or fists, he can’t accurately predict. Cas props up and tries to crane over him, to see his face, and Dean throws an arm up to keep him back. “Cas, don’t.”

“Dean-”

“ _Don’t._ ” His chest hurts. Shoulders, everything. Something stabs up his neck. He’s having a goddamn heart attack, he decides, and he almost welcomes it. May death spare him the indignity of driving out the dead-end roads of his life.

“You’re not having a heart attack,” Cas says helpfully. Goddamn that profound bond.

“Wish I was,” Dean whispers. “Because fuck everything about this.”

“Don’t say that, Dean. Do you-”

 _“No,_ I do _not_ want to talk about it.” He can’t. Why doesn’t anybody get that?

“I understand,” Cas says.

Into the darkness, Dean blinks his eyes clear and doubts Cas very much.

“Dean?”

“What.”

Cas hesitates, and after a minute Dean says, _spit it out, Cas,_ at the same time that Cas says, _I’m lonely,_ into Dean’s hair.

Dean goes mute. Sort of dumbstruck. It takes him a minute to recover.

“Didn’t know you could get lonely,” he says, sort of cruelly, because he doesn’t know what else to say, and Cas rolls away to the other side of the bed. According to the Old World Order, Cas is supposed to peace-out at this point in a conversation, to disappear in winged miff, mildly insulted and not compelled to offer up a decent sayonara. But things are different, now. Cas is living a human life, and there are no more peace-outs.

Which leaves Dean stuck with him and his mouthy mouth.

“You have Sam,” Cas says. “You talk to Sam. Sam talks to you. Nobody talks to me. Not in the same way.”

Dean bites his lip.

“I used to know all things. But here, I know nothing. No one.”

Dean can’t bite it any harder. “Cas, I don’t know what you want me to do about it.”

Cas thinks. “You can talk to me.”

“I do talk to you,” Dean says.

Cas goes quiet.

Dean shakes his head, hair rustling against his pillowcase. “What do you want me to _say?”_

“It’s alright, Dean,” Cas says, sounding resigned, and that’s not fair. Angry would be fine; Dean could deal with that. But resignation isn’t going to sit well with him, not when it’s Cas, not when he’s all Cas has. It’s Sammy, but reversed, and he's not gonna goddamn abandon anyone.

“What kind of _things,"_   Dean grates, “do you want me to _say?”_

“Anything,” Cas says, which Dean knows (from experience, decades of it) isn’t true. There’s shit-tons he can say to Cas that won’t make Cas feel any less lost in the world. Dean’s been saying that kind of stuff all his life. Hearing it, too. And he doesn’t have it in his heart — he doesn’t have it in him, anywhere — to pass that bag of nothing off on Cas. So he goes the other way, instead: he dives right off the pier into the ocean. Because fuck it, right? That’s what Cas wants; that’s what Cas gets.

“Alright,” he says. He takes a shitty, shallow breath. “I miss Sam. I- That’s what— that’s how I feel.” His voice breaks, but he decides not to care. Cas shifts behind him. Thank god they’re not facing each other, or this could never, ever happen. “I miss him like nothing else.”

“He’s coming back,” Cas says. “It’s only Tahiti.”

“That’s...it’s not what I mean. I mean, I miss Sam. The way it was. Everything.”

“I see.”

“If-” Dean’s voice cracks again, damn it to hell, “-if things weren’t going so good for him, I’d-” he clears his throat “-I mean, some days I just want to trash all this stuff. All of it. Apartment, job… Get us back in the car and get the hell out, you know? Get back on the road, back to what I know how to do.” Cas’ warm hand comes down on Dean’s shoulder, and Dean almost shudders it off. “I don’t know how to do what I’m supposed to be doing, here,” he says softly. “I’m not sure I even know what that is in the first place.” It all trails off into a gruff whisper. “I don’t know what I’m doing, Cas.”

“I am under the impression that few humans do,” Cas offers.

“I promise you, Cas, they’re all doing better than I am. Every fucking one.” It’s the alcohol and fatigue and depression talking, now. He never should have opened his mouth. He’s tearing up again and that makes him feel even worse.

Castiel’s arms cinch around Dean’s chest, and Dean does all he can to keep his breathing in check, but between all the drunkspeak threatening to fly out of his mouth and the heart-attack-that-isn’t, something has to give. Fuck Castiel, Angel of The Lord. Dean didn’t ask for pity, never has, and being on the receiving end of Cas’ is like rubbing an onion in his eyes.

“I think you’re doing fine,” Cas says, and suddenly tears are streaming down Dean’s face and he can’t do a fucking thing to stop it. Cas buries his face against the back of Dean’s neck in a ridiculous, illogical attempt to spare Dean the indignity of being observed as he cries.

“You crazy fuck,” Dean cries, and gives up, turning his open mouth into his pillow and sobbing quietly until all the fucking estrogen clears. When it’s over, he’s embarrassed, but not as much as he thought he’d be. He’s still buzzed, which maybe helps.

“Do you feel better?” Cas ventures. Dean decides that Cas will no longer be allowed to watch daytime television. Not when this sort of touchy-feely Dr. Phil mumbo-jumbo is what’s making it into his head.

“No,” Dean says. Half-true.

“Maybe you will in the morning.”

Dean sniffs and agrees to not argue the point. Maybe he will feel better. Maybe he’ll drink himself to death. Either way, the morning will come, and he can wait and see. He lets Cas maintain a bearlike grip on him for a reason he won’t examine. He lets it happen for a long time, until he slides back into exhaustion. His eyes close, and he’s lulled toward sleep by the evenness of Cas’ breathing.

“Did you know Tahiti was created to be a grand palace for the jellyfish?” Cas murmurs, as Dean’s almost out. “Back when they could fly.”

Dean doesn’t even question it. “Good to know,” he mumbles.

“Like your hot air balloons, but with tentacles.”

“Cas… what the fuck, man.”

 

* * *

  
Dean doesn’t drink himself to death.

Sam comes back.

Life goes on.

Five years pass; five years of mostly stasis, with small leaps forward.

Sam acquires dogs. Many, many dogs. And a kid.

Dean quits the liquor distribution business, and with that, quits liquor. He takes up cars, instead, which is a much better match, even if it doesn’t really pay.

Cas quits being lonely. This is directly related to Dean giving up liquor, because in addition to taking up cars, Dean takes up Cas as well.

Still, it takes five years before Dean and Cas kiss each other: five years of platonically sharing everything from morning breath to deodorant and sleeping limb-to-limb (because when Sam returned from Tahiti, Cas didn't see a reason to vacate Dean's bed and Dean didn't make him) before Cas breaks it all.

He starts small — a calculated risk — and leans in one night when Dean says goodnight. Cas kisses him experimentally, like it isn’t anything, just some lips pressing together, no big deal. Dean freezes and stays frozen, even when Cas turns over again and kills the lights, and Cas is asleep before he can feel Dean relax.

 

* * *

  
Persistence is everything. Cas learned this from Dean.

The second time Cas kisses Dean, Dean knows it’s coming. He goes wooden but doesn’t flinch or try to dodge, and Cas knows it’s just a matter of time. One night, Dean’s going to reciprocate.

Then, one night, Dean does. 

And on that night, Cas lets things draw out an extra couple of seconds, because he can feel that Dean’s close to something — a bird fluttering, shaking slightly under Cas’ hands, loosening in the smallest possible increment — and then suddenly Cas catches the smell of automotive grease that never comes out of Dean’s palms, because Dean’s got his hands wrapped around Cas’ ears, anchoring his head while Dean kisses him back.

Dean kisses him hard in the dark: eyes shut, eyebrows low and worried, and Cas knows it's not the right time to throw a leg over Dean’s hips and push things forward. It’s taken too long to get them here. He won’t let them slide back.

 

* * *

  
Dean gets used to kissing Cas — old dog, new trick and all — and eventually, he gets used to much more than that. He turns sloppy, carnal and dirty: all teeth and sweat and unstoppable tongue, feeling Cas up with his eyes closed, sliding every part together to see how it fits.

Cas gets used to the human weirdness of sticky skin, of noses where they shouldn’t be, of full-body contact and the perilously heavy grinding that Dean likes. It’s nice to be dragged down by the baseness of of what Dean wants: nice like being lit on fire. After thousands of years living in a junkless Heaven only to be set free upon Dean’s earth, Cas can’t get enough.

 

* * *

  
“Cas,” Dean rasps in the dark, licking under Cas’ arm and up to his neck, tasting and smelling a hundred things that Cas would be insecure about, if Cas had human insecurities (which he doesn’t, and probably never will). “If you don’t get this show on the road...” 

Cas cuts Dean’s litany in the middle, makes Dean’s tone dip and the pitch drop through the floor, just starting to push into him. No prep, no sympathetic fingers first, because that’s not what Dean wants and Cas knows it. Dean wants it to burn.

“Cas,” Dean whines, with Cas at his throat, siphoning off each word as it leaves: _Oh_ tastes cool and breathy; _God_ tastes hollow; and _Cas_ is special, shimmering, holy and sweet.

Dropping his mouth to Dean’s ear, Cas bites it, licks up Dean’s temple and listens to the tendons in his neck as he bends Dean’s head back, listens to Dean’s throat stumble over sound and tries not to wish so hard for him to open his eyes. Dean’s eyes, Cas knows, will be as dewy as his forehead, the same color as the earth before it turned into The Earth, and Cas wants to see them focus. Cas wants to see them _try_.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
